It's a bad day for Proud Boys and MAGA riot organizers.

They had been depending on the anonymity of the internet to protect their day jobs as they went about promoting racist rioting and the, um, overthrow of the US government.

Turns out their passwords (middle name plus current house number, really?) have been exposed in a major hack of their chosen right-wing service provider, a company called Epik.

According to The Washington Post, "Epik long has been the favorite Internet company of the far-right, providing domain services to QAnon theorists, Proud Boys and other instigators of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — allowing them to broadcast hateful messages from behind a veil of anonymity."

Anonymous no more!

But that veil abruptly vanished last week when a huge breach by the hacker group Anonymous dumped into public view more than 150 gigabytes of previously private data — including user names, passwords and other identifying information of Epik’s customers.

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by Rachel Bitecofer

I’m not a big fan of “Third Way,” for numerous reasons including that it’s a “corporate-funded centrist group” that reportedly has received secret funding from the Koch brothers. Ick. Despite that, I found its new report – The 99 House Districts That Will Determine Dems’ Fate – by David de la Fuente (an alum of NARAL and the DSCC; also on the advisory board of High School Democrats) to be interesting. We’ll get to the part about Virginia in a second, but first, here are some highlights from the report.

• “…all House districts are about equal in population but not in electoral relevance.”
• The report rates districts based on five criteria, giving them one point for each: 1) “districts that Democrats flipped from red to blue in the 2018 cycle and gave Democrats the House majority” (43 districts fit that profile); 2) “districts where the Democratic margin of victory for House in 2018 was in the single-digits” (40 districts); 3) “districts that have a Democratic House incumbent that also voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016” (31 districts); 4) “Democratic House districts located in Presidential swing states” (70 districts); 5) “House districts located in Presidential Battlegrounds states that feature a 2020 Senate race or a state with an incumbent Senator of the party opposite the typical Presidential trends of the state” (39 districts).
• The eight “Five Point Races” are IA01 (Abby Finkenauer), IA03 (Cindy Axne), ME02 (Jared Golden), MI08 (Elissa Slotkin), MI11 (Haley Stevens), MN02 (Angie Craig), VA02 (Elaine Luria), and VA07 (Abigail Spanberger). According to the Third Way report, “Every voter in these districts will make a meaningful choice for President, Senate, and House when they go to the polls in 2020. There is not enough money, volunteer time, and attention that can go into these districts.” Note the two Virginia districts in there; clearly, we have to make these a top priority in 2020.
• There are four “Four Point Races”: AZ01 (Tom O’Halleran), MN07 (Collin Peterson), and NH01 (Chris Pappas), plus AZ02 (Ann Kirkpatrick).
• “There are 20 total districts that received three points—though six different types”: GA06 (Lucy McBath), IL14 (Lauren Underwood), NJ02 (Jeff Van Drew), NJ03 (Andy Kim), NM02 (Xochitl Torres-Small), NY11 (Max Rose), NY19 (Antonio Delgado), NY22 (Anthony Brindisi), OK05 (Kendra Horn), SC01 (Joe Cunningham), and UT04 (Ben McAdams); CO06 (Jason Crow), MN03 (Dean Phillips), and VA10 (Jennifer Wexton); FL26 (Debbie Mucarsel-Powell) and FL27 (Donna Shalala); NV03 (Susie Lee) and PA08 (Matt Cartwright); PA17 (Conor Lamb); IA02 (Dave Loebsack).
• “There are 40 districts that got two points, and they fall into six different categories”: AZ03 (Raul Grijalva), AZ07 (Ruben Gallego), AZ09 (Greg Stanton), CO01 (Diana DeGette), CO02 (Joe Neguse), CO07 (Ed Perlmutter), ME01 (Chellie Pingree), MI05 (Dale Kildee), MI09 (Andy Levin), MI12 (Debbie Dingell), MI13 (Rashida Tlaib), MI14 (Brenda Lawrence), MN04 (Betty McCollum), MN05 (Ilhan Omar), NC01 (G.K. Butterfield), NC04 (David Price), NC12 (Alma Adams), NH02 (Ann Kuster), VA03 (Bobby Scott), VA04 (Donald McEachin), VA08 (Don Beyer), and VA11 (Gerry Connolly); CA10 (Josh Harder), CA21 (TJ Cox), CA25 (Katie Hill), CA39 (Gil Cisneros), CA45 (Katie Porter), CA48 (Harley Rouda), IL06 (Sean Casten), KS03 (Sharice Davids), NJ07 (Tom Malinowski), TX07 (Lizzie Fletcher), TX32 (Colin Allred), and WA08 (Kim Schrier); PA05 (Mary Gay Scanlon), PA06 (Chrissy Houlahan), and PA07 (Susan Wild); NV04 (Steven Horsford); NJ11 (Mikie Sherrill); WI03 (Ron Kind).
• “There are 27 districts that got one point, falling into four categories but with the bulk in the first”: FL05 (Al Lawson), FL07 (Stephanie Murphy), FL09 (Darren Soto), FL10 (Val Demings), FL13 (Charlie Crist), FL14 (Kathy Castor), FL20 (Alcee Hastings), FL21 (Louis Frankel), FL22 (Ted Deutch), FL23 (Debbie Wasserman Schultz), FL24 (Frederica Wilson), NV01 (Dina Titus), OH03 (Joyce Beatty), OH09 (Marcy Kaptur), OH11 (Marcia Fudge), OH13 (Tim Ryan), PA02 (Brendan Boyle), PA03 (Dwight Evans), PA04 (Madeline Dean), PA18 (Mike Doyle), WI02 (Mark Pocan), and WI04 (Gwen Moore);  IL17 (Cheri Bustos), NJ05 (Josh Gottheimer), and NY18 (Sean Patrick Maloney); CA49 (Mike Levin); AL07 (Terri Sewell).
• Bottom line: “If you want to see Democrats make progress on anything at the federal level in the next decade, you should pay close attention to the ninety-nine districts where gaining votes will deliver greater victories.”

So what about Virginia? As you can see, every single Democratic-held U.S. House of Representatives seat from Virginia (VA02, VA03, VA04, VA07, VA08, VA10, VA11) – 7 total out of 11 U.S. House seats from Virginia, including every seat currently held by a Democrat – is included in the “99 House Districts That Will Determine Dems’ Fate” list. Here’s a brief recap as to why that’s the case.

• Four of the seven – VA03 (Bobby Scott), VA04 (Donald McEachin), VA08 (Don Beyer), and VA11 (Gerry Connolly) – are “Two Point Races,” in that they are “safe Democratic districts that are in Presidential swing states with Senate elections in 2020.” As the report explains, these Democratic incumbents “couldn’t lose a House general election if they tried in these places, but juicing turnout in these districts actually matters up the ballot for cementing Democratic power in Washington.”
• Two of the seven – VA02 (Elaine Luria), and VA07 (Abigail Spanberger) – are considered “Five Point Races,” in that “all flipped a district from red to blue in a tight race in a district that voted for Trump in 2016,” and that “[e]ach are located in a 2020 Presidential and Senate battleground state.”
• One of the seven – VA10 (Jennifer Wexton) – is a “Three Point Race” in which the district is “represented by [a freshman] who flipped a Clinton district from Republicans in 2018 in a blowout fashion” and is “located in [a swing state].”

I think this is a reasonable way of looking at things; how about you? I’d also note that there are districts not included in the 99 that I think are potentially winnable, such as VA05 and maybe even VA01 – both currently held by Republicans (Denver Riggleman in VA05 and Rob Wittman in VA01). But overall, I agree that it’s going to be crucial to hold VA02 and VA07, while cranking up turnout in the “blue” districts.

Finally, I’d note that the “Third Way” report doesn’t get into gubernatorial, state legislative and other “down-ballot” races, but that these are also VERY important – both in their own right, and also with regard to the 2020 presidential and Congressional races. Here in Virginia, of course, we are on an odd-year cycle for legislative and gubernatorial elections (the next big one, for the entire state legislature, is of course on November 5 – just a few weeks from today), but in other states it will really matter next year…

Wisconsin Democrats faced a bitter setback on Tuesday, apparently losing a state supreme court race they expected to win easily against a deeply flawed candidate. The result triggered some bitter deja vu for local liberals — and stood in sharp contrast to Democrats’ big successes in the 2018 midterms and other recent races in the state.

One big difference that Democrats could learn from as they head into the 2020 presidential campaign in what could be the most important state of President Trump’s reelection map: This race turned largely on social, not economic issues.

Conservative Judge Brian Hagedorn came into the race with a ton of baggage on social issues. He helped found a private religious school that bars teachers, students and parents from being in same-sex relationships. He made paid speeches to a group that advocates making sodomy illegal and sterilizing transgender people. And as a 27-year-old law student just over a decade ago, Hagedorn wrote pieces addressed to “fellow soldiers in the culture wars” that called Planned Parenthood a “wicked organization,” the NAACP a “disgrace to America,” and repeatedly compared same-sex relationships to bestiality.

On top of that, almost all of the judges that he and liberal judge Lisa Neubauer both served with endorsed her over him.

That led Democrats and progressive groups backing Neubauer to hammer Hagedorn as an unqualified bigot, using the vast majority of their resources to rail against his controversial social views.

Money poured in from national liberal groups including former Attorney General Eric Holder’s anti-gerrymandering organization, while business groups that usually back conservatives in these types of races mostly stayed out of the contest.

But that strategy may have backfired: Conservatives responded by accusing Neubauer and her allies of anti-Christian bigotry and plastered Holder’s face across mail pieces tying her to national liberal groups. That included mail pieces to social conservatives comparing liberals’ attacks Hagedorn to how they treated Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a message Walker himself amplified in the race’s closing days:

Were you upset with the way the media and the left (sometimes indistinguishable) treated Justice Kavanaugh?  They’re doing the same thing to Judge Brian Hagedorn in WI.  He needs everyone’s vote on Tuesday 4/2. pic.twitter.com/kUJ8AFohlW

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) March 31, 2019

Turnout boomed in the heavily Catholic Green Bay area as well as the Northwoods compared to the last off-year elections, where Neubauer got her clock cleaned. She also didn’t do well at boosting turnout in crucial Milwaukee County, a perennial problem for Democrats that only President Obama and the 2018 ticket were able to solve in recent years.

Both Neubauer’s strategy and her struggles echo what happened to Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin and across the Rust Belt in 2016. She spent the last months of the campaign hammering President Trump as being unfit for office because of his nasty comments about women and minorities, while largely ignoring economic issues in paid media. That strategy drove her base turnout but also pushed up rural support for Trump, who capitalized on rural white rage against Clinton trying to tell them what to do. And without a heavy emphasis on how Trump (and Hagedorn) would hurt average families, both liberal candidates offered few arguments to more populist voters for why they should back them.

Democrats’ closing message in this race stands in stark contrast to their approach during the 2018 midterms.

Watch this ad from Neubauer’s allies attacking Hagedorn’s “extremist agenda” towards gay people:

Now compare it to one of Democrats’ October ads last fall:

Gov. Tony Evers (D) drilled then-Gov. Scott Walker (R) on fiscal issues, attacking him for underfunding the state’s education system and infrastructure (he blasted Walker for the “Scottholes” dotting the state’s highway system) while attacking him for giving huge tax breaks to Chinese company Foxconn to build a plant in the state’s southeastern corner. That helped Evers edge Walker in a close race — the first time in four tries that Democrats were able to defeat the battle-hardened governor.

And Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), the first openly gay woman in the Senate and one of its most liberal members, pulled off a lopsided win by hyper-focusing on healthcare issues, opioid addiction and other issues that directly affect Wisconsinites.

Wisconsin Democrats argued accurately that it’s harder to focus on economic issues in judicial races that often revolve around hot-button issues and personal attacks, rather than races for offices that have more direct power over lawmaking and the economy.

“If you’re running for supreme court you can’t say you’re going to increase wages, fill potholes and make healthcare more affordable. It devolves into our side trying to disqualify theirs and vice versa,” said Joe Zepecki, a top Wisconsin Democratic strategist.

But Zepecki said that Democrats must make those economic arguments to hope for success in the state.

“Whoever our nominee is has to be somebody that can connect progressive policies to a better life. People are looking to elected officials to do something,” he said.

In some ways, this last race was a return to form for Wisconsin, where incredibly tight and high-turnout races have been the norm in both off-year and presidential elections. The difference between Hagedorn’s half-point win (pending a recount) and Walker’s one-point loss is hard to parse.

A few caveats: First, Neubauer actually won more votes than Rebecca Dallet did en route to a double-digit supreme court win last year. The big difference this time wasn’t Democratic voters — it was a surge in GOP voters. Second, Neubauer and her allies did have some ads attacking Hagedorn on non-social issues — allies slammed Hagedorn in ads for pushing to make it harder for victims of nursing home abuse and lead paint poisoning to sue. Third, no matter who the Democrat is, Trump and Republicans will find a way to drive culture war messaging in 2020.

But Democrats don’t have to play along. They didn’t across the Midwest last fall, and swept gubernatorial and Senate races in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, three states Trump barely won in 2016 and likely the three most important states on the 2020 map.

Holder admitted in a Wednesday morning speech it was a race that his side “should have won.”

If Democrats can learn the right lessons from this race, they won’t be saying the same thing in November 2020.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem lamented that the Trump trade wars have "devastated" her state and put the entire state economy in danger of collapse if he doesn't get the trade talks with China wrapped up soon.

Noem, a Republican, was interviewed at the POLITICO State Solutions conference where she was quite blunt:

“South Dakota has been devastated by the trade wars that are going on,” Noem said at POLITICO’s State Solutions Conference, noting that agriculture is “by far” the largest industry in the state. The Republican governor warned that the trade woes of farmers can trickle down to the rest of the state, impacting “every main street business, everybody that has another entity out there that relies on a successful ag industry.”

I don't want to be too much of a crank here, but he did promise he would do this. When they elected the old goat president, John Birch Society founder Robert Welch did a jig in hell. They've finally got their guy in the White House -- corrupt, greedy, and stupid. This is what happens when you support a party that built itself for Donald Trump.

Watch the entire discussion below, via POLITICO: